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How well do institutional theories explain firms'perceptions of property rights?

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  • Ayyagari, Meghana
  • Demirguc-Kunt, Asli
  • Maksimovic, Vojislav

Abstract

The authors examine how well several institutional and firm-level factors and their interactions explain firms'perceptions of property rights protection. Their sample includes private and public firms that vary in size from very small to large in 62 countries. Together, the institutional theories they investigate account for approximately 70 percent of the country-level variation, indicating that the literature is addressing first-order factors. Firm-level characteristics such as legal organization and ownership structure are comparable to institutional factors in explaining variation in property rights protection. A country's legal origin and formalism index predict property rights variation better than its openness to international trade, its religion, its ethnic diversity, natural endowments or its political system. However, these results are driven by the inclusion of former socialist economies in the sample. When the authors exclude the former socialist economies, legal origin explains considerably less than openness to trade and endowments. Examining a broader set of variables for robustness, they again find that when they exclude former socialist countries, legal origin explains comparatively little of the variation in perceptions of judicial efficiency, corruption, taxes and regulation, street crime, and financing.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 3709.

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Date of creation: 01 Sep 2005
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Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3709

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Keywords: Legal Products; Privatization; Judicial System Reform; Legal Institutions of the Market Economy; Gender and Law;

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Niclas Berggren & Christian Bjørnskov, 2012. "Does Religiosity Promote Property Rights and the Rule of Law?," Economics Working Papers 2012-08, School of Economics and Management, University of Aarhus.
  2. Ayyagari, Meghana & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2006. "How important are financing constraints ? The role of finance in the business environment," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3820, The World Bank.
  3. Ayyagari, Meghana & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2007. "Firm innovation in emerging markets : the roles of governance and finance," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4157, The World Bank.
  4. Demirguc-Kunt, Asli, 2006. "Finance and economic development : policy choices for developing countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3955, The World Bank.
  5. Ayyagari, Meghana & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2012. "Financing of firms in developing countries : lessons from research," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6036, The World Bank.
  6. Ayyagari, Meghana & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2011. "Small vs. young firms across the world : contribution to employment, job creation, and growth," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5631, The World Bank.
  7. Meghana Ayyagari & Thorsten Beck & Asli Demirguc-Kunt, 2007. "Small and Medium Enterprises Across the Globe," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 415-434, December.
  8. Ayyagari, Meghana & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2006. "What determines protection of property rights ? An analysis of direct and indirect effects," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3940, The World Bank.
  9. Roe, Mark J. & Siegel, Jordan I., 2011. "Political instability: Effects on financial development, roots in the severity of economic inequality," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 279-309, September.

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